Canadians woke up this morning with the news that Greepeace activists had scaled the walls of a Parliament Hills building and displayed a banner reading “Harper/Ignatieff: Climate inaction costs lives.” For my non-Canadian readers, they are referring to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal opposition leader Michael Ignatieff.

It was a fitting way for Canada to kickstart the long-anticipated Copenhagen climate conference, which began this morning and will go on until Dec. 18, when U.S. president Barack Obama is expected to attend. Obama’s attendance at the end is actually a good sign because it signals that Obama could end up closing the conference with the kind of strong commitment to greenhouse-gas reductions that the world is expecting. On the first day of the conference officials from other countries were clear about what the focus would be over the next 11 days: the U.S. and China. China announced last month that Premier Wen Jiabao would also be attending, while India’s leader Manmohan Singh has also committed to attend. Both India and China have raised hopes after both countries committed to reducing the carbon intensity of their economies (not absolute reduction, mind you, but at least it’s a start).

A consensus is emerging that a $10-billion a year fund should be set up, by 2012, that would help developing countries with their adaption and mitigation efforts. But China and India (backed by Brazil and South Africa) have made clear that they’ll walk out of the conference if developed nations try to force their agenda on developing nations. Still, the fact that all of these countries are at the table and have agreed on the need to reduce emissions is an encouraging sign. “Never in 17 years of climate negotiations have so many different nations made so many firm pledges together,” U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer said in a statement yesterday evening. The key word all countries are clinging to is “momentum.” The New York Times has a great analysis of what to expect here.

What’s also interesting is that Canada has attracted a lot of international attention, but not for its commitments. As these two editorials — one from the Toronto Star, one from the Globe and Mail — show, the country enters this conference MIA, both with an action plan and a meaningful emissions-reduction target. This morning, Canada’s top negotiator at the conference repeated the government’s stubborn position: “Canada is not going to be changing the number that it is promoting at this meeting.”